Coral Speak (August 2016)

by Kate Moore Composer

Coral Speak for Louise Devenish is a percussion suite of laments and playful dances in homage to the fragility of the Great Barrier Reef, where the corals are currently under threat due to climate changes and human intervention. Each piece imagines the colourful interplay of movement between the living corals, joyful sentient creatures celebrating the their idyllic surrounding and utopian waters. The pieces have a melancholic edge at the prospect of the corals retreating and dissipating as the water changes. The ebullient dance of life and beauty comes to an abrupt halt as it is silenced and abandoned, leaving behind a skeleton like a ruined underwater city that once thrived, never to return.